Sui

Sui is a proof-of-stake Layer 1 that organises state as discrete objects rather than as account balances, with a maximum supply of 10 billion SUI. The consequence is unusual: a transaction touching only objects you own can bypass full consensus and finalise almost immediately.

Owned objects do not need agreement

If a transfer involves only assets with a single owner, there is no possibility of conflicting claims, so validators can confirm it without ordering it against everything else. Consensus is reserved for shared objects that several parties can touch. Sending an asset is therefore structurally faster than interacting with a shared pool — a distinction most chains do not make.

Objects instead of balances

Each asset is an object with its own identifier, owner and attributes. This maps naturally onto NFTs and game items, where individual identity matters, and it lets the runtime know precisely which transactions can safely run in parallel because it can see exactly what each one touches.

Storage is paid for once, and refundable

Users pay a storage fee held in a fund that compensates validators for holding data over time, and deleting an object returns part of that deposit. This addresses a problem most chains ignore: state grows forever, and someone has to bear the cost of storing it indefinitely.

Capped supply with scheduled unlocks

Total supply is fixed at 10 billion, with staking rewards drawn from a reserve and allocations to early contributors and investors releasing on published schedules. As with any chain in this generation, the unlock calendar matters more to supply dynamics than the issuance rate.

Where the design pays off

Sui suits applications with many independent assets and high transaction counts — games, consumer applications, NFT-heavy systems. For applications centred on one shared pool, such as an order book or a lending market, most transactions touch shared objects and the fast path does not apply.